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The editors are pleased to announce that the winner of the best paper prize for 2023 is Addis Yimer for his paper titled, 'The effects of FDI on economic growth in Africa', published in volume 32, issue 1, pages 2–36. We congratulate Dr. Yımer, who will receive a prize of 500 pounds. [Extracted from the article]

The article announces that Denis Stijepic and Helmut Wagner have won the Best Paper prize for 2018 for the paper "Impacts of intermediate trade on sector structures."

The article announces that Yasunori Ishi has been presented the Best Paper Prize for his paper "Dumping in a Product Differentiated Reciprocal Trade Industry Emitting Global Pollution" that was published in Volume 26, Issue 2 of "The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development."

The article announces that Heike Belitz and Florian Mölders have been awarded as the winners of the Best paper Prize for 2016 for their paper titled "International Spillovers through high-tech imports and R&D of foreign owned firms" that was published in a previous issue of the periodical.

This paper examines the relationship between financial development and FDI and between financial development and trade openness in boosting domestic investment. Initially, this paper examined this issue for panel data sample of 161 countries over 1995–2018. Considering the issue of aggregation bias due to heterogeneous nature of countries in the sample, this complementarity or substitutability effect between financial development and FDI as well as financial development and trade openness have further been re-examined by using 129 developing country samples. Using panel fixed effects (FE) and two-step system GMM estimation technique, the empirical results demonstrate the substitutability between financial development and FDI as well as a substitutability relationship between financial development and trade openness in driving domestic investment. The results hold for both the samples and also in alternative measures of financial development and extended specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the resources and capabilities that determine firm-level adjustments after a sudden unexpected closure of a major export market. We focus on the effects of the 2014 Russian embargo on Western food exporters using the example of Estonian firms. The paper applies a novel multimethod approach consisting of Study I quantifying the embargo effect on the trade diversion of firms that had exported embargoed goods to Russia, and Study II conducting a multiple case study into three dairy exporters highly affected by the embargo. Study I employs a difference-in-difference model with matched exporters of embargoed goods as treatment. Study II builds on extensive document analysis that serves as input for interviews with the CEOs of the sample dairy firms. We find that pre-shock productivity is on average a good predictor of post-shock firm trade diversion (Study I), however, we specify that the key firm-level resources and capabilities necessary for successful post-shock adjustments might not be reflected in the standard quantitative productivity level measures (Study II). We conclude that key firm-level resources and capabilities for embargo-resilience are the quality of exporting experience, competitive product-market matching, absorptive capacity, and managerial vision and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the economic upgrading of suppliers in global value chains (GVCs) is influenced by the prevailing governance structures in supplier-lead firm relationships. Using a novel governance index for Philippine and Thai manufacturers, this paper tests if tight effective control received by suppliers can be detrimental to higher-order GVC upgrading. The unique 2012 Survey on Adjustments of Establishments to Globalization was used to calculate the index for Philippine manufacturers, while the World Bank's Productivity and Investment Climate Study 2006–2007 was used for Thailand. The econometric results confirm that tight governance negatively affects upgrading in both countries. Specifically, the Philippine estimates show that tight governance has no impact on process upgrading given that: (1) all GVCs benefit from efficient suppliers, regardless of governance structures; and (2) process upgrading has relatively simpler technological requirements than higher-order upgrading. Tight governance significantly reduces the probability of achieving more sophisticated product, functional, and intersectoral upgrading, especially when this encroaches on the lead firm's core functions. But since governance and control are necessary for efficient GVC operations, suppliers must conscientiously build capabilities and networks to move up the upgrading ladder. For weak-capability suppliers, innovation networks are important external sources of technology and knowledge spillovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses matched data from the CSMAR database and the China City Statistical Yearbook through a fixed effects model to examine the impact of business credit environment on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) exports at the city level in China. Considering the possible endogenous problems, this paper chooses the number of scholars in Ming and Qing dynasties as the instrumental variable of urban commercial credit environment. The empirical results show that: Firstly, the improvement of urban business credit environment has a significant contribution to the export growth of enterprises; Secondly, the mechanism of the role of urban business credit environment on SMEs exports is mainly expressed through promoting R&D investment and enhancing market dynamics; Thirdly, the business credit environment is more obvious to state-owned enterprises, eastern regions and cities with less trade freedom. With the development of urban business credit environment, individuals or companies join the competition in the industry through new start-ups to stimulate corporate exports, and existing SMEs promote corporate exports through local preferential policies, increased investment in R&D, and optimized innovation policies as well as resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that Cuong Nguyen Viet has received the 2015 Best Paper Prize for his paper "The Impact of Trade Facilitation on Poverty and Inequality: Evidence From Low- and Middle-Income Countries."

Several econometric studies, some undertaken for industrialised countries and some for emerging economies, have found that export participation by industrial enterprises tends to lower their energy intensity and CO2 emissions intensity. Similar studies undertaken for Indian manufacturing firms using firm-level data have also reached the same conclusion. This paper uses plant-level data for 2008–2015 to examine the impact of export intensity on the energy intensity of Indian manufacturing. The use of plant-level data has the advantage of incorporating location-specific differences into the analysis, such as the contribution of renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc.) to the power supply in the state in which the plant is located. The paper finds a significant negative effect of export intensity on energy intensity, confirming earlier findings. Also, on a relative scale, the energy-efficiency-enhancing effect of exporting is larger for relatively more energy-intensive industries. Further, increases in the share of renewable energy in the power supply make industries more energy efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that Ichino Yasukazu has won the Best Paper Prize for 2014 for his paper "Parallel Imports and Piracy in a North- South Mode", published in April-June issue of the "Journal of International Trade & Economic Development."

What determines Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows remains a primary concern of economists and policy makers; yet the uncertainty surrounding FDI theories and empirical approaches has created ambiguity regarding the determinants of FDI. This paper applies Leamer's (1983, 1985) traditional Extreme Bounds Analysis (EBA) as well as the Sala-I-Martin modified form of EBA to identify the robust determinants of FDI using cross-sectional data (averaged for the period of 1985-2016) covering 103 emerging and developing countries. We consider 33 potential economic, political and institutional determinants. To address concerns about multicollinearity, the VIF restriction specifies that only estimates with VIF below five are reported. The results show that all variables of interest are fragile determinants of FDI when using traditional EBA. Yet, when applying the Sala-i-Martin EBA, nine robust variables are revealed. Some policy implications are discussed. Highlights What determines Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows remains a primary concern of economists and policy makers; yet the uncertainty surrounding FDI theories and empirical approaches has created ambiguity regarding the determinants of FDI. It is a common practice in the fields of economics and finance to report the most 'appealing' or convenient regression or regressions after an extensive search and data mining, given that the 'true' model is unknown. This paper applies traditional Extreme Bounds Analysis (EBA) as well as the Sala-i-Martin modified form of EBA to identify the robust determinants of FDI. We demonstrate that what is important is not the significance or otherwise according to one regression equation but rather the robustness or fragility of the variables in the sense that the sign and significance do not change over a large number of regressions selected according to a predetermined procedure. Policy makers would be able to understand the importance of the major determinants of FDI mentioned in the paper and take steps to formulate policies that encourage and attract more FDI. Such determinants could include market size, making regulations more international trade friendly and investing in the nation's human capital. Further, research and development facilities could be developed to provide a basis for technological advancements which would attract more FDI inflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital and trade liberalization are playing a central role in growth theories. However, the link between human capital, trade liberalization, and economic growth remains a challenging question due to the inconclusive results of the previous studies. Paper contributes to this debate through asymmetric links among human capital, trade liberalization, and economic growth by incorporating labor and capital for Pakistan's economy by applying the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model. Results suggest that the positive and negative asymmetric impact of trade liberalization and human capital on growth substantially vary in the short and long run. In the long run, the increased trade liberalization hurts economic growth, while increased human capital has a minimal positive impact on economic growth in the short and long run. The implications of this paper are for economists and policymakers to strengthen the role of human capital and trade liberalization for Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gravity variables such as distance, adjacency, colony, free trade agreements or language are used to capture the effects of trade costs in empirical studies. By using actual data on trade costs, this paper decomposes the overall effects of such variables on trade into those through three gravity channels: duties/tariffs (DC), transportation-costs (TC), and dyadic-preferences (PC). As opposed to the existing literature where gravity variables act like supply shifters (through DC and TC), this paper empirically shows that they act like demand shifters (through PC). Regarding policy, it is implied that welfare-improving globalization cannot be achieved only through reductions in direct costs such as duties/tariffs or transportation costs; it is rather the globalization itself that should be promoted in order to shift the preferences of destination countries toward international products and thus reduce indirect trade costs. The results are further connected to several existing discussions in the literature, such as welfare gains from trade and the distance puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that Halis M. Yildiz is the winner of the journal's 2013 Best Paper Prize for her paper "Foreign direct investment and customs union: Incentives for multilateral tariff cooperation over free trade."

This paper assesses the genealogy of competitive indices in international trade and theoretically develops a measure of export threat which estimates direct competition in vertical market segments. We identify the assumption of homogeneity in these export threat measures as a weakness that undermines accuracy. Hence, we develop a new measure of export threat, the direct intra-market threat (DIMT), which incorporates relative vertical and market share changes over time to accurately estimate a country’s direct threat to other exporters in a third market. We argue that the market segmentation method applied in complement to the DIMT estimate provides an all-encompassing methodology in the estimation of export threat, which we argue is superior to the Dynamic Index of Competitive Threat (DICT) and Direct Threat methodologies. The paper uses the case of China and India (CHINDIA) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to assess the empirical estimates of the DIMT relative to DICT and Direct Threat over the period 2000–2021. Our study is motivated by a research gap in the estimation of the competitive threat posed by a large, diversified exporter on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few decades, most of the emerging market economies (EMEs) have adopted financial liberalization. Evidence shows that the financial sectors/institutions in emerging economies were either underdeveloped or functioning with a lot of inefficiencies under inadequate regulation. The paper examines whether liberalization in the financial sector has led to financial development for a bunch of EMEs including BRICS. The paper differs from the existing literature in its approach of dealing with the measurements of financial development and considering financial liberalization as a gradual process. Panel regressions are estimated for 9 countries based on 22 years' data for four aspects of financial development, viz. depth, efficiency, stability and competition. Results indicate that financial liberalization in terms of freedom in capital markets has a positive effect on financial depth and competition, whereas liberalization from government interference in the banks and other financial institutions has a positive impact on the stability of the financial sector. Trade openness has a role in enhancing the efficiency of the financial sector. Also, evidence suggests that capital account openness leads to increased depth and does not destabilize the financial sector. GDP, political stability, regulatory quality and government effectiveness are also important factors in influencing more than one aspect of financial development in a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that Serge Shikher has won the Best Paper Prize for 2012 for his paper "Putting industries into the Eaton-Kortum model" published in the December 2012 issue of the journal.

This paper assesses the impact of manufacturing global value chain (GVC) participation on industrial upgrading in developing countries. After constructing a novel manufacturing GVC dataset for 37 countries from 2001 to 2017, we apply panel fixed-effect estimation to evaluate whether value chain integration could lead to industrial upgrading. Our findings show that increasing participation in manufacturing GVC has led to structural change in the industrial sector. In the baseline model, we find a percentage rise in manufacturing GVC corresponds to 0.35–0.43% increase in the share of high-tech sector. Further analysis reveals that the upgrading channel is primarily derived from forward linkages, while backward linkages contribute in diminishing low-tech manufacturing activities. Our findings are robust under alternative estimation techniques. This linear transformation confirms earlier studies and thus highlights the critical role of GVC in promoting industrial upgrading in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the micro effect of export stimulus policy. We use the seven rounds of export tax rebates implemented by the Chinese government during the international financial crisis as a natural experiment and explore their impact on the export resilience of firms using the difference-in-differences approach. We find that the export resilience of Chinese enterprises increased by 0.027 standard deviations due to export tax rebates. Further studies confirm that export tax rebates significantly improve export resilience mainly by reducing value-added taxes, expanding production scale, and accelerating the adjustment of export structure. In addition, the positive effect of export tax rebates varies among enterprises and products. These results highlight the critical role of stimulative policies in promoting export resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that the recipients of the Best Paper Prize 2010 award are Claus Aastrup Jensen, Nikolaj Malchow-Møller and Jan Rose Skaksen for their paper "Does coordination of immigration policies among destination countries increase immigration?".

The article offers information on the Best Paper Prize competition wherein an honorarium of 500,000 pounds will be awarded to the winning paper.

Research on the relationship between globalisation and the environment tends to focus on the direct effect of globalisation, rarely considering the role of institutions. This paper introduces insights from political economy, which suggests that environmental sustainability models would be greatly improved if institutions are considered. We test this hypothesis by estimating the relationship between economic globalisation, bureaucratic quality, and ecological footprint in Ghana for the period 1984–2016. The long-run analysis is based on the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to cointegration. The result supports the hypothesis that expansion in economic globalisation has a reducing effect on environmental quality. Bureaucratic quality appears to exert a significant positive effect on ecological footprint. Furthermore, the estimation shows that the quality of institutions is critical for environmental quality. Based on the results the paper presents some policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the winners of the Best Paper Prize for 2011 which includes Carmen Fillat and Julia Woerz.

This paper uses a modified gravity model to investigate the effects of rules of origin (RoO) on 61 countries' participation in global value chains (GVCs) during the period 2005–2015. We define GVC participation as the value added contained in exports, looking both backward and forward from a reference nation. RoO are heterogeneous in the degrees of restrictiveness that govern the origin of products to obtain preferential tariff treatment. The empirical results show negative relationships between RoO's restrictiveness and both backward and forward participation, and these adverse effects become more prominent when we control the endogeneity bias. However, the implementation of regime-wide RoO, including diagonal cumulation and de minimis, can reduce these negative effects. The mitigating roles of both regime-wide rules are quite similar in terms of magnitude, which is significant as the current literature on the liberalization of RoO only focuses on the role of cumulation. Our findings suggest that in order to upgrade participation in international production networks, a country should adopt a less restrictive and regime-wide RoO in free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to empirically examine the impact of high-technology trade on employment. A dynamic labour demand equation is employed to investigate the impact of high-tech trade on employment in 20 high-tech exporting countries. Using data from 2007 to 2016, this study highlights some evidence on the negative relationship between high-tech trade and employment. This paper argues the development towards high-tech trade should be accompanied by appropriate policy measures to lessen the employment effect and to ensure the benefit of growth is well-distributed among all segments of the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines how exports respond to exchange rate movements (exchange rate and exchange rate volatility) at the micro and macro levels using Turkey’s bilateral export data with 65 partner countries. Panel data contaninig 65 cross-sectional dimensions and 60 monthly time series dimensions from 2018:01 to 2022:12 are used. The empirical results of the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) technique show that the negative effect of exchange rate volatility on micro export flows is amplified. Moreover, the potential positive effect of the exchange rate on micro export flows is weaker. Our findings are robust against the alternative method of exchange rate volatility and nominal exchange rate volatility. Our results are also intact under alternative robustness tests. The paper provides notable policy implications. Policymakers should be aware of the potential structural differences between micro and macro exports. Therefore, policymakers should also consider other aspects such as cross-border e-commerce when formulating economic policies on microexports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the database of China Migrants Dynamic Survey from 2011 to 2018, this paper explores the impact of trade openness on migrants’ marriage, and reveals that trade openness increases migrants’ divorce rate significantly. The potential mechanism analysis finds that trade openness affects migrants’ divorce rate through the channel of their marriage value. Besides, the heterogeneity test indicates that the impacts of trade openness on migrants’ marriage are heterogeneous across different regions, social and cultural environments, gender groups, and migration circles. Furthermore, the moderating effect analysis reveals that Confucian culture can weaken the impact of trade openness on migrants’ divorce rate, which has a negative moderating effect on the relation between trade openness and migrants’ divorce rate. Finally, this paper provides supporting evidence for the fact that trade openness does affect migrants’ marriage and thus offers a possible explanation for the continuously increasing divorce rate in China from the perspective of trade openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital finance is reshaping trade credit. This study investigates the influence of digital finance on trade credit among A-share listed companies in China from 2011 to 2020. The paper matches this data with city-level digital finance index (DFI) data. Empirical results indicate that digital finance significantly benefits trade credit. This impact occurs through bank competition, regulatory penalties, and disclosure quality channels. Different levels of digital finance development and financing constraints of companies have a varying impact on trade credit. This paper provides a new perspective on trade credit in the firm's supply chain that enriches theoretical research on digital finance. The research results can help the country to implement digital finance development strategy better and offer relevant guidance and reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much effort has been devoted to understanding how trade openness is linked to technological progress. Less documented is the effect on green technology, which is particularly important as it is green technological progress that alleviates environmental degradation while improving economic growth. To fill the void, this paper empirically examines whether trade openness drives green technology development and whether the effect depends on the extent of trade openness and environmental policy stringency. In a sample covering both advanced and developing countries, the paper finds that green technology first decreases and then rises with increased trade openness, meaning that a sufficient level of trade openness is required for green technological progress. Tighter environmental policy is also found to weaken the beneficial effect of trade openness on green technological progress, implying that lax environmental policy creates a better environment for more open countries to develop green technology. However, these effects vary across countries, depending on the origin and destination of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional quality is considered to be an important factor in boosting economic growth of a country. This paper explores the role of institutional quality in economic growth and more specifically the role it plays via the channel of foreign direct investments. This paper uses a larger dataset of 104 countries and applies GMM estimation method to a dynamic panel data to evaluate the direct impact of institutional quality on economic growth and the indirect impact of institutional quality on economic growth through enhancing the FDI-induced economic growth. This paper provides evidence that both FDI inflows and institutional quality cause stronger economic growth. The FDI-led growth, however, was only experienced in the low and middle-income countries. In these countries, better institutional quality was also found to be enhancing the FDI-led economic growth. An important finding of this paper is that in the high-income countries, FDI was found to slow down the economic growth. The results are robust and consistent for individual institutional quality indicators and controlling for endogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper determines which of the three policy approaches: fiscal, monetary and exchange rate can better address external imbalances in the three largest African economies, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. To this end, use is made of the panel vector autoregressive model to assess the dynamic effects of shocks emanating from the three policy approaches. The findings of the paper indicate that unlike in many emerging and developed economies the current accounts of these three economies react to fiscal, monetary and exchange rate shocks. More particular, the results of the empirical analysis show that the appreciations of the currencies in the three economies lead to current account surpluses. This is mainly attributed to the fact that most African economies have a high propensity to import with limited productive capacity for exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role that trade liberalisation policies play in attracting FDI flows to African economies from 2000 to 2017. This study contributes to the extant literature on the relevance of trade liberalisation policies in developing economies and in particular, African Countries. By employing new measures for trade liberalisation policies, the study estimated a System Generalized Method of Moment model to examine the relationship between trade liberalisation policies and FDI inflows to Africa. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of policies to enhance trade liberalisation would be germane in attracting higher levels of FDI flows to African economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has investigated the shocks effects of inflation, money supply, and exchange rate on the economies of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) from 1987 to 2019 using the Kapetanios-Shin-Snell nonlinear cointegration test, Kilian-Vigfusson asymmetric tests, and Hatemi technique that allows the estimation of Asymmetric Structural Vector Autoregressive (ASVAR) model. The findings revealed that in all the countries, the shocks effects of inflation, money supply, and exchange rate are asymmetric except in Guinea and inflation in Liberia. Furthermore, for Gambia and Nigeria, only money supply is impacting the economies, while for Ghana, Guinea, and Liberia, none of the variables is impacting the economies but for Serra Leone, money supply and exchange rate are impacting its economy. Moreover, all the countries have common sources of shocks emanating from monetary and exchange rate policies except Gambia, which is monetary policy only. Therefore, the paper recommends the members, especially Ghana, Guinea, and Liberia, a solemn effort on appropriate monetary and exchange rate policies to boost their economies. Also, since almost all the countries have common sources of shocks emanating from monetary and exchange rate policies, they can embark into the monetary integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an innovative approach to modelling trade specialisation of Slovakia and Czechia. These countries have a limited export structure concentrated mainly on machinery and transport equipment that require recent technologies and are subject to continuous automation. We aimed to identify factors that impact Slovakia's and Czechia's performance in the automobile industry on the EU-28 market using the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Approach. The Vollrath indicator of the revealed competitiveness (Vollrath 1987) demonstrates specialisation, representing a modification of the Balassa index of revealed comparative advantages (Balassa 1965). The paper shows compelling evidence of long-and-short-run asymmetry between trade specialisation and the real effective exchange rate in Slovakia. The results suggest that the Czech competitiveness in the automobile industry does not fall with a higher effective exchange rate. Other factors such as human capital and country size bolster the theoretical assumptions and show the over specialisation of both countries and chances to be less specialised with higher population growth. This paper's findings have a broader context and application for countries focusing primarily on manufacturing road vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation, human capital, and institutions have been widely recognised in the literature to be causally important for economic development. Most of the available studies, however, treat measures of these determinants either separately or as substitutes. In this paper, we study the income effects of border openness to migration, education, and the rule of law (our proxies for globalisation, human capital, and institutions, respectively). Using cross-country data covering all regions of the world, and employing instrumental variables for all three factors, we establish that they each have a robust, positive, and strong association with economic development. We then consider whether there are any useful interrelations between the three factors in explaining income. On the interaction effects, the results show that the impact on income of: (i) migration can be materially affected by cultivating good institutions but this effect is not dependent on the education level; (ii) education is important irrespective of the levels of migration and institutions; and (iii) institutions is significantly improved by raising the level of education but is not influenced by migration level. Our paper makes a significant contribution as the first investigation into the effects of migration, education, and institutions jointly and as complements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces political competition into a vertical model with successive duopolies. The upstream consists of a home state-owned enterprise (SOE) and foreign private intermediate-input producer while the downstream consists of home and foreign private final-good producers. The SOE manager lobbies for a better weight configuration comprised of profits and sales, the downstream domestic firm lobbies for more subsidies to enhance its profits and industrial policy, and the policymaker, as one agency, maximizes a weighted sum of the lobbyists' contributions and social welfare, sets policies for the two firms. The paper shows that it is in the interest of the SOE's manager to promote sales at the expense of profits. The upshot on the effects of lobbying is that the government will set too high a weight on sales for the SOE and will confer excessive subsidy to the downstream firm beyond the respective social optimal levels. Lobbying is therefore socially harmful. This paper further shows that if only one lobbyist contributes, which results in lower social welfare than when only its rival contributes, it must be that the lobbyist contributes more than its rival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the conference related to heterogeneity to be held in Utrecht, The Netherlands from October 6 to 7, 2011.

Heterogeneous enterprise agglomeration is an important perspective in understanding urban exports and reshaping the new advantages of urban openness. This paper considers data from China's industrial enterprises and municipality-level panel data from 192 cities to systematically examine enterprises' heterogeneity, agglomeration patterns, and urban exports. The results reveal that: (1) the heterogeneity in enterprise productivity exhibits a significant promotional effect on urban exports in China's central and northeastern regions, but not on its western regions; (2) specialized agglomeration positively affects exports in the central and western regions and in small and medium-sized cities, while diversified agglomeration significantly and positively impacts the eastern and northeastern regions and small and large cities; and (3) thresholds exist in determining the effects of agglomeration and sequencing on urban exports and their sequence by considering heterogeneity in enterprises' productivity. This work provides important policy implications for the development of export trade in cities and countries by suggesting a focus on rational planning and adjustments to regional industrial policies, improvements to talent flow mechanisms, and construction of social infrastructures. HIGHLIGHTS Heterogeneous enterprise agglomeration can shape exports from city-based businesses A new simultaneous model determines how to increase urban exports Heterogeneity can have various impacts in different Chinese regions and cities Increasing productivity and exports requires strategic planning for optimization [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between digital economy and signal information on firms‘ markup has been overlooked and not well explained, especially in the emerging economies. When there is information asymmetry or too much information, the export decisions of firms are not completed independently, but the result of the comprehensive trade-off of the export signals issued by the 'neighbors'. This paper discusses the impact of the development of digital economy on the markup of export firms by distinguishing two perspectives of export signal, namely herd behavior and peer effect. We find that the digital economy has a positive impact on firm markup. There is substitution effect in digital economy and export signals, and digital economy acts price bonus by influencing export signals. The growing popularity of market signals could offset some of the advantages of the digital economy on export markup for companies. In addition, our paper finds that foreign-owned firms, large-scale firms, highly competitive industries and non-digital economy industries adjust their markups more significantly when they were affected by export signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a theoretical model matching empirically observed relationships between average labor productivity and the number of operating firms. The models in the related literature which utilize CES utility function find no relationship between average labor productivity and the number of operating firms in the economy (Melitz, Marc J. [2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity." Econometrica 71 (6): 1695–1725] and many versions of this model). Moreover, the models which utilize non-homothetic preferences with a numeraire good find a positive relationship between average labor productivity and the number of operating firms (Melitz, Marc, and Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano [2008. "Market Size, Trade, and Productivity." Review of Economic Studies 75: 295–316] and many versions of this model). However, the model developed in this paper provides a single theoretical framework that depending on the source, a rise in the average labor productivity may lead to an increase or a decrease in the number of operating firms. In line with our results, we provide empirical evidence from ten European countries for the 2008–2016 period, which shows that the correlation between these two variables is positive for some of the countries, while negative for the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) on the reshaping of value chains from both domestic and regional perspectives by using national-level data from the Belt and Road countries. The findings indicate that the depth of RTAs among Belt and Road countries can not only enhance regional integration characterized by regional value chain inter-connections and promote the value chain upgrading of trading partners in the regional production system, but also facilitates the construction of domestic value chains, thus forming a new pattern of bilateral value chain reshaping. The conclusions still hold after addressing the potential endogeneity and robustness concerns. Mechanism test results show that the effects of productivity enhancement and institutional quality improvement are important channels for RTAs-deepening to promote value chain reshaping. Heterogeneity test results indicate that ‘WTO-X’ provisions of RTAs are more conducive to promoting value chain reshaping, and the promoting effect of RTAs-deepening on value chain reshaping is more significant for the manufacturing industry. These findings have important policy implications to further expand high-level opening-up, deepen RTAs provisions and actively participate in global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the impact of real exchange rate (RER) misalignment on the trade balance between the United States and China, accounting for the complexity of traded products. We employ two recent econometric techniques: the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to estimate both long – and short-run dynamics, and the dynamic panel threshold model of Seo, M. H., and Y. Shin (2016. “Dynamic Panels with Threshold Effect and Endogeneity.” Journal of Econometrics 195 (2): 169–186) to uncover potential non-linearities and identify critical thresholds that could lead to a regime shift. Using highly disaggregated trade data at the HS 06-digit level, encompassing 913 products from 2004 to 2020, our findings reveal a negative impact of RER misalignment on the United States’ trade balance with China. However, this detrimental effect is significant only in industries dealing with less complex products. In contrast, industries handling highly complex products show a notably positive impact. Furthermore, our results suggest that industries can benefit from an undervalued exchange rate only when they have a relatively high level of product complexity. Additionally, heightened product complexity can mitigate any adverse effects overvaluation might have on the trade balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates inflation dynamics in emerging markets. We apply a multi-country model (GVAR) and a time-varying Granger causality test (TVGC) to examine the drivers of inflation in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Türkiye over the period 1980Q1-2022Q4. The aim is to ascertain whether these drivers are locally or globally determined and vary over time. The GVAR model results indicate that local and global factors drive domestic inflation, collectively contributing to inflationary pressures in emerging countries. The TVGC results, on the other hand, provide strong evidence of the causality from local and global factors to domestic inflation. Local factors appear to have a stronger influence than global ones, suggesting that local dynamics play a more significant role in explaining inflation in these countries. Consequently, globalization and economic/trade integration, seen as tools to suppress inflation, can turn into factors that cause inflation in the face of a supply shock such as the one caused by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the direction of causality between income inequality and growth, income inequality and debt, and debt and growth for 11 selected countries in SSA countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). The panel bootstrap causality approach is applied to these countries from 1980 to 2018. Inequality is represented using Gini coefficient, Palma ratio, and Theil index. The findings show that there is at least a one-way causal relationship between public debt and inequality in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, between inequality and growth in Botswana, Lesotho, Nigeria, and South Africa and between growth and debt in Botswana, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda. Empirical results imply that the relations between the relevant variables in the Sub-Saharan African countries may vary according to the specific characteristics of these countries. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to analyse the impact of these three macroeconomic variables together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of local human capital in facilitating the export diversification improvement effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) in African countries. To this end, we use a panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model which is able to deal with the heterogeneity issue associated with the cross-country data. Based on a sample of 30 African countries over the period 1996–2019, the results show that there is a minimum threshold of human capital beyond which the export diversification enhancing effect of FDI is unlocked in African countries. In other words, only countries located above a certain threshold of human capital benefit from the positive effect of FDI on export diversification. These results suggest that policymakers in African countries should focus on improving the conditions for acquiring local human capital (education and health) in order to extract economic gains from FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances are regarded as an important source of foreign exchange for the majority of low and middle-income countries, and thus have the potential to impact their aggregate economic activities. The current study investigates the impact of remittance inflows and international oil prices on India's trade balance from 1975 to 2020. We use a non-linear autoregressive and distributed lag model to examine the asymmetric impact of remittance and oil price changes on trade balance. The study discovered that rising remittance inflows have a detrimental long-run impact on the trade balance. It also demonstrates that while a positive oil price shock worsens the trade balance, a negative oil price shock improves it in the long run. As a result, the paper emphasises the need to reduce skilled migration, properly channel remittance revenues, develop financial institutions, and implement more efficient exchange rate policies in order to achieve long-term trade surpluses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the direction of causality between income inequality and growth, income inequality and debt, and debt and growth for 11 selected countries in SSA countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). The panel bootstrap causality approach is applied to these countries from 1980 to 2018. Inequality is represented using Gini coefficient, Palma ratio, and Theil index. The findings show that there is at least a one-way causal relationship between public debt and inequality in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, between inequality and growth in Botswana, Lesotho, Nigeria, and South Africa and between growth and debt in Botswana, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda. Empirical results imply that the relations between the relevant variables in the Sub-Saharan African countries may vary according to the specific characteristics of these countries. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to analyse the impact of these three macroeconomic variables together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]